Just when it looked like the Detroit Tigers could do no wrong, it seems like nothing is going right.

The Tigers came into the World Series sitting pretty with everything except the home-field advantage, win one of the first two games and even that would be on their side. They were rested and had their pitching lined up just how they wanted it to thanks to a sweep in the American League Championship Series. All the safe money was placed on them.

So far, it’s looking like the baseball gods duped all the betters. Just like in 2006, the Tigers have gone from favorites to looking like they are going to fail to capture their first World Series title since 1984 after the San Francisco Giants again caught the breaks and again got solid pitching in a 2-0 victory in Game 2.

But it wasn’t just fluky breaks the Giants received. The Tigers helped them out by making regrettable decisions that helped blemish their complexion, and they now find themselves in a two-game hole as the series moves east to the Great Lake State for Games 3-5 where failing to win two of the next three means the Giants will spill champagne in Detroit.

The Giants had a dilemma on their hands before this series started. Who to throw in Game 2? Lefthander Madison Bumgarner or righthander Tim Lincecum? Both had struggled down the stretch of the regular season and as starters in the playoffs. Bochy went with Bumgarner, believing he had worked out his kinks through side sessions and that the Tigers were more vulnerable against lefties – they were 26-25 against them in the regular season and 62-49 against righties.

That decision was looking like the wrong one in the second inning after Prince Fielder was hit by a pitch and Delmon Young doubled down the left-field line with nobody out. But before serious concern about Bumgarner could settle in, third-base coach Gene Lamont was windmilling his 275-pound runner toward the plate.

The relay throw was in time and catcher Buster Posey swipe-tagged Fielder before he touched the dish.

Rally killed. Momentum lost.

“Anytime those kind of big plays happen and they don’t go your way it takes away momentum,” Fielder said.

Considering how the Tigers fared against lefties this season and how their offense failed to lift off the ground in Game 1, the call by Lamont was hasty at best and plain stupid at worst. You never risk the first out at third base or the plate.

“If I had it to do over, I probably would have held him,” Lamont said. “We haven’t been scoring runs and I got overly aggressive, I guess.”

That play let Bumgarner out of the corner and he only got better from that point, shutting out the Tigers for seven innings, striking out eight and allowing just two hits, one of them Young’s wasted double.

Now the Tigers go home to face the Giants’ two best pitchers, Ryan Vogelsong in Game 3 and Matt Cain in Game 4.

The Tigers promise they aren’t half dead despite being half buried. “You’re not going to see anybody with their head down. Our heads are held high,” Detroit ace and Game 1 loser Justin Verlander said. “Nobody here thinks we’re out of this thing. It sucks and we’re not happy, but we’ve been playing must-win games for the better part of two months now.

“We won when we had to, and now we have to.”

This has been the postseason of the dramatic and nearly impossible comeback. It seems like almost every team since the Division Series has pulled off at least one of those.

But right now, with the way the Tigers have hit and with the Detroit air predicted to check in somewhere barely north of 40 degrees by the time Game 3 starts, it’s difficult to see the Tigers offense breaking out of the cage the Giants have put it in.

The term “Team of Destiny” is usually just slapped on a club for dramatic effect, but the Giants are making it look more and more like a legitimate label. They’ve come back improbably in two series and played six elimination games already.

In this series, a ball hit the third-base bag for an excuse-me double, Pablo Sandoval went historic with three homers in the first game and Gregor Blanco somehow kept a bunt fair down the third-base line that led to the winning run in Game 2.

“You just go home and you thank the higher powers or whoever is in charge,” Giants third-base coach Tim Flannery said. “And try not to piss any others off.”

Every time something crazy happens for the Giants, the easier it is to write off the Tigers. It also becomes easy to see the Tigers as a forgotten footnote in a magical season for the black and orange.

Fortunes now have to shift in order for the Tigers to make everyone stop fawning over the Giants. It’s now set up for a comeback of their own.

“It’s lined up to be storybook,” Verlander said. “We just have to make it happen.”